Browse Movies : 2005 : Drama (Page #3)

John Constantine has been to hell and back. Born with a gift he didn't want, the ability to recognize the half-breed angels and demons that walk the earth in human camouflage, Constantine (Keanu Reeves) was driven to take his own life to escape the tormenting clarity of his vision. But he failed. Resuscitated against his will, he found himself cast back into the land of the living. Now, marked as an attempted suicide with a temporary lease on life, he patrols the earthly border between heaven and hell, hoping in vain to earn his way to salvation by waging war on the earthbound minions of evil. But Constantine is no saint. Increasingly disillusioned by the world around him and at odds with the one beyond, he's a hard-drinking, hard-living bitter hero who scorns the very idea of heroism. Constantine will fight to save your soul but he doesn't want your admiration or your thanks—and certainly not your sympathy. All he wants is a way out. When a desperate but skeptical police detective (Rachel Weisz as Angela Dodson) enlists his help in solving the mysterious death of her beloved twin sister, their investigation takes them through the world of demons and angels that exists just beneath the landscape of contemporary Los Angeles. Caught in a catastrophic series of otherworldy events, the two become inextricably involved and seek to find their own peace at whatever cost.

Charles Schine is a New York businessman who meets a sexy woman on a train and ends up in a seedy hotel room with her. While there, he's beaten and she is raped by a man who also robs them. The robber then begins to blackmail Schine so that his wife and family don't find out about his infidelity with the woman. This drives Schine from his humdrum life into a world of fraud, betrayal, and murder.

Millions of devoted fans worldwide have been spellbound by the dark invention of its adventures . . . have awaited its every incarnation with urgent anticipation . . . and have devoted countless hours, days and weeks to conquering its hidden mysteries: Doom. When the home-computer game "Doom" was first launched in 1993, no one could have foreseen the legion of fans it would create and the mania surrounding its every new permutation. "Doom" and its successive installments have transfixed gamers worldwide for over a decade and have sold millions of copies (while chalking up an unprecedented tens of millions of downloads as shareware). It is, simply, the most explosive home-computer game franchise phenomenon in history. Now, the game that made history is jumping from computer screens to the motion picture screen: get ready for "Doom". Set countless years in the future and told in the hyper- kinetic, kamikaze style that made its gaming predecessor a global phenomenon, the science fiction action adventure "Doom" takes the viewer to the far corners of the galaxy with a fully-realized vision of a dark and disturbing future.

Traudl Junge (Lara), the final stenographer for Adolf Hitler (Ganz), tells of the Nazi dictator's final days in his Berlin bunker at the end of WWII.

Ben Crane (Kurt Russell) was once a great horseman, whose gifts as a trainer were now being wasted on making other men's fortunes. Sonya was a great horse whose promising future on the racetrack was suddenly cut short by a career-ending broken leg. Considered as good as dead to her owner, who also happens to be Ben's boss, Sonya is given to Ben as severance pay, along with his walking papers. Now, it will take the unwavering faith and determination of Ben's young daughter, Cale (Dakota Fanning), to bring these two damaged souls together in a quest for a seemingly impossible goal: to win the Breeders' Cup Classic.

When Maureen Doherty (Jacqueline Bisset) announces she is going to marry Oliver Vance (Stuart Wilson) immediately after her husband's death, her son Scott (Adam Garcia) is certain there is more to this liaison than first appears. Mistrustful of Oliver, Scott is soon blinded by his own attraction to Kelly Vance (Alice Evans), Oliver's daughter. Convinced his father's death was not an accident, Scott, aided by Kelly, begins to investigate. Bound by this common purpose, they quickly bond and fall in love. Before they can prove their suspicions, a series of events leads to a fatal explosion that kills both their parents. When Scott learns of Kelly's deceptions, he begins to wonder if the finger of guilt is deliberately being directed at him and if he has put his trust in the wrong person. Is it possible that Kelly is behind all of this?

An American artist living a bohemian existence in Paris, Tom Warshaw (David Duchovny) is trying to make sense of his troubled adult life by reflecting upon his extraordinary childhood...The year is 1973, and thirteen-year-old Greenwich Village native Tommy Warshaw (Anton Yelchin) is on the brink of becoming a man. While his bereaved single mother (Téa Leoni) continues to mourn the death of his father, Tommy escapes his own grief by causing trouble at school and making afternoon meat deliveries with his best friend Pappas (Robin Williams), a mentally challenged janitor. Following the romantic advice offered by Lady (Erykah Badu) - incarcerated in the infamous Greenwich Village Women's House of Detention for shadowy reasons—Tommy even experiences his first taste of love. Yet when an unexpected tragedy radically alters his world, Tommy must make a life-defining choice—one that will compel the adult Tom Warshaw, thirty years later, to confront his unfinished past.

Starring Sigourney Weaver, Jeff Daniels, Emile Hirsch, and Michelle Williams, "Imaginary Heroes" is a funny and poignant coming of age story in which the façade of an ordinary American family is peeled back to reveal that nothing is as it seems. Tim Travis (Hirsch) is walking through his life like it's a bad dream. His mother Sandy (Weaver) is the master of the Travis house - with a healthy drug habit, a decade long grudge, and a secret that is literally tearing her apart. His father Ben (Daniels) is a shell of the man he once was, crippled by circumstance and blind to the mistakes of his past. But in typical American style, the Travises aren't depressed - they're living their lives in a forlorn haze. As painful revelations are made that threaten to divide the family, moments of laughter and truth provide the salve that ultimately bring them closer together.

"Kids in America" is a reality-based dramedy about the experiences of young people in modern-day America. Set in the fictional Booker High School a diverse group of students are tired of seeing their freedoms taken away. They band together and change their world by empowering themselves and their community to protect freedoms of expression and speech.

Holden Donovan (Gregory Smith) is fed up with Principal Weller (Julie Bowen) who goes to great lengths to stop the students from exercising their right to free expression. She expels a young woman for passing out condoms and advocating safe sex on national "safe sex" day and suspends two boys who were kissing in the hallway. Meanwhile, she is running for the Superintendent of their school district, which will give her a chance to practice her brand of administration beyond Booker High School.

The students have an ally in Mr. Drucker (Malik Yoba) one of their teachers who encourages them to fight for their rights. He pays a price for his leadership and is fired by Principal Weller. He decides to use his dismissal to make a change of his own, by producing a documentary chronicling the experiences of students who are faced with similar issues.

The true story of a dying river town in Indiana, which in 1971 succeeded in becoming the host for the Gold Cup of hydroplane boat racing. Competing on the racing circuit requires deep-pocketed sponsorships and top-of-the-line technology and equipment. Jim McCormick, even though he's now a father with a family to support and has a steady job, has never abandoned his dream of piloting the community-owned Miss Madison to victory in the sport's biggest event. Alas, the economic struggles of this trade-diminished municipality have severely crimped its level of support. But faced with the opportunity to welcome the prestigious championship, McCormick wins, or more correctly hustles, the town's backing and, despite the misgivings of his wife and a sizable percentage of his neighbors, undertakes to race Miss Madison and compete with the big boys.

In the Yorkshire countryside, working-class tomboy Mona (Nathalie Press) meets the exotic, pampered Tasmin (Emily Blunt). Over the summer season, the two young women discover they have much to teach one another, and much to explore together.

Captives of the very relationships that define and sustain them, nine women resiliently meet the travails and disappointments of life.

Four siblings live happily with their mother in a small apartment in Tokyo. The children all have different fathers. They have never been to school. The very existence of three of them has been hidden from the landlord. One day, the mother leaves behind a little money and a note asking her 12-year-old boy to look after his younger siblings. And so begins the children's odyssey, a journey nobody knows. Despite their mother's abandonment, the four children do their best to survive in their own little world, devising and following their own set of rules. But when they have no choice but to engage with the world outside the apartment, the fragile balance that has sustained them collapses. Kore-eda incorporated documentary techniques to makes this film extraordinarily intimate and unaffected. Filmed chronologically over a year, "Nobody Knows" captures the young amateur actors growing as their characters do, highlighting the details of the children's lives, whether the nuances of a manicure, a toy piano, squeaking sandals, a cup of instant noodles, or a box of chocolates, to evoke not only the distinctive world of these particular abandoned children, but the gentleness and beauty of every childhood.

Charlize Theron plays single mom Josey Aimes, who rallies her female coworkers to rise above unfair treatment they face at a local mining company. Frances McDormand plays Glory, Josey's closest friend; Sissy Spacek and Richard Jenkins are Josey's parents, Alice and Hank; Sean Bean plays Glory's boyfriend Kyle; Woody Harrelson is Josey's lawyer, Bill White; Jeremy Renner is Bobby, a mineworker and Josey's former classmate; and Michelle Monaghan plays Sherry, Josey's fellow mineworker.

After a dinner out, photographer Sophie Jacobs and her boyfriend, Hugh, stop at a corner store for a late night snack. While Sophie waits unaware in the car, Hugh is murdered in a violent robbery. Haunted by guilt, Sophie goes on with her life as best she can: teaching photography at a local art college, meeting her mother for lunch, and visiting her therapist. But one day at school, a slide mysteriously appears in the projector's carousel—an image of what looks like her car in front of the corner store the night of the shooting. Are these paranoid visions stemming from her grief and guilt, or does someone know something about the murder? As her investigation deepens, more strange events start to occur, drawing into question exactly what happened the night of Hugh's death.

"Pretty Persuasion" is a dark satire of our present day do-it-yourself scandal, manipulate-the-media, easy fix pill-popping, overnight celebrity obsessed culture. When worldly-wise beyond her years high school student Kimberly Joyce (Evan Rachel Wood) accuses her English teacher (Ron Livingston) of sexual harassment, she turns her exclusive Beverly Hills private school, and everything else in her wake, upside down. Hell hath no fury like a teenager scorned...

The glorious world of Jane Austen is at last brought back to the big screen in all its romance, wit and emotional force in "Pride & Prejudice". Faithful to the setting and period of the beloved novel and filmed entirely on location in the U.K., this is the first movie version of the story in 65 years.

The classic tale of love and misunderstanding unfolds in class-conscious England near the close of the 18th century. The five Bennet sisters – Elizabeth, or Lizzie (Keira Knightley), Jane (Rosamund Pike), Lydia (Jena Malone), Mary (Talulah Riley) and Kitty (Carey Mulligan) – have been raised well aware of their mother's (two-time Academy Award nominee Brenda Blethyn) fixation on finding them husbands and securing set futures. The spirited and intelligent Elizabeth, however, strives to live her life with a broader perspective, as encouraged by her doting father (two-time Golden Globe Award winner Donald Sutherland).

When wealthy bachelor Mr. Bingley (Simon Woods) takes up residence in a nearby mansion, the Bennets are abuzz. Amongst the man's sophisticated circle of London friends and the influx of young militia officers, surely there will be no shortage of suitors for the Bennet sisters. Eldest daughter Jane, serene and beautiful, seems poised to win Mr. Bingley's heart. For her part, Lizzie meet with the handsome and – it would seem – snobbish Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen), and the battle of the sexes is joined.

Their encounters are frequent and spirited yet far from encouraging. Lizzie finds herself even less inclined to accept a marriage proposal from a distant cousin, Mr. Collins (Tom Hollander), and – supported by her father – stuns her mother and Mr. Collins by declining. When the heretofore good-natured Mr. Bingley abruptly departs for London, devastating Jane, Lizzie holds Mr. Darcy culpable for contributing to the heartbreak. But a crisis involving youngest sister Lydia soon opens Lizzie's eyes to the true nature of her relationship with Mr. Darcy.

The ensuing rush of feelings leaves no one unchanged, and inspires the Bennets and everyone around them to reaffirm what is most important in life.

Based on Jonathan Larson's award-winning Broadway musical, "Rent" chronicles a group of New York village artists struggling with identity and artistic integrity in an HIV-positive world. Roommates Roger and Mark, a songwriter-recovering addict and a guerrilla filmmaker, respectively, must find a way to pay their former roommate-turned-landlord when he decides to reneg on his promise to provide them rent-free living.

This is the story of Ralph Walker, a 14-year-old who in 1954 outran everyone's expectations in his bold quest to win the Boston Marathon. His seriously ill mother knows he is waiting to explode into greatness, except that he has no idea where that greatness will manifest itself. Then, an unfortunate incident of self-abuse in the community pool inadvertently points him in the right direction. As penance for his actions, Ralph is conscripted to the cross-country team. Desperate to believe a miracle will bring his mother out of a coma, Ralph becomes a convert to the church of running and sets his sights on winning the Boston Marathon.

This is the true story of Tony Fingleton, a young man from a troubled family who found the inner strength to become a champion. Set in 1950s Brisbane, Australia, the family drama centers on Tony, a young man who beats the odds to become a champion swimmer in spite of his overbearing, alcoholic father and long-suffering, but quietly heroic mother. Overshadowed in his father's eyes by his brothers, it's only when Tony displays an extraordinary swimming talent that he feels he has a shot at wining his father's heart—and maybe even Olympic gold.